Video cameras having multiple sensors with partly overlapping fields of view are becoming increasingly popular in the surveillance market. Images being captured at the same time by the multiple sensors of such a video camera may be stitched together to form a panorama image which depicts the combined fields of view of the multiple sensors. The stitching is preferably made so as to provide a seamless transition between the images.
The process of stitching together the images from the multiple sensors is typically processing intense, thereby being prone to introduce latency in the processing pipeline of the video camera. In the end, this may put limitations on the frame rate of the video camera since the processing pipeline of the video camera may not be able to process the captured frames fast enough.
One solution to this problem, found in video cameras which are currently available on the market, is to include a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) upstream of the processing pipeline of the video camera to carry out the stitching of the simultaneously captured images before being input to the processing pipeline. However, this solution is expensive, in particular if the FPGA should be fast enough to not introduce undesirable delays caused by the stitching of the images. Further, this solution excludes that some of the image processing carried out in the processing pipeline of the video camera is performed on the individual images prior to the stitching being performed. This may in some cases lead to a poorer quality of the final stitched image being output at the end of the processing pipeline of the video camera. There is thus room for improvements.